Press Releases

Grand opening introduction

Today, June 28th, marks the launch of a cooperative effort by unpaid grassroots individuals from a number of different countries and areas who belong to a number of different free choice organizations. That effort is this website, Tobacco Control Tactics (TCT), and was inspired by a website recently launched from the UK's University of Bath under the name Tobacco Tactics (TT).

The TCT website is in some ways a mirror image of that put out by the Bath personnel. The major difference of course is that our site is put together by unpaid Free Choice activists, not professionals, and not feeding off of any grant. A query to the TT folks simply asking about their basic funding has been totally ignored. We are also different of course in our personnel. Michael J. McFadden of the Citizens Freedom Alliance applied to be an editor of the TT website and was asked to submit samples of material he had written. After submission and review of those materials he was informed that,

As the wiki has just been launched, TobaccoTactics has restricted

editorship rights to those who currently have a contract with the University of Bath. At the moment there are no plans to take on additional editors, although that may change in the future. Any additional editors would be asked to declare their funding sources to ensure there is no

conflict of interest.

The TT website does not reveal who the contractees at the University of Bath are, but they have made it clear that their editors consist only of such contractees. They do not however reveal their identities. In contrast to the TT website, the Tobacco Control Tactics site is open to any additional editors who are active members of Free Choice organizations, have shown a solid history of supporting Free Choice positions, and have credible writing skills. As we have no funding, we have no staff or contracts limiting who we may choose as editors: our "staff" is not for hire and the organizations they are drawn from are not beholden to either Big Tobacco or Big Pharmaceutical. At the moment it is impossible to make any such assertion about the Tobacco Tactics site personnel but it seems unlikely that its entire hidden editorship has a history free of Big Pharma grant money.

In any event, we wish you a warm welcome to Tobacco Control Tactics! This site is a true grass-roots initiative with all contributions made by ordinary citizens: members of the groups listed below and some independent members of the public, all volunteering to spend a lot of time and personal effort to fight the heavily funded Tobacco Control Industry.

• FORCES
• TICAP
• C.A.G.E.
• Freedom 2 Choose (UK)
• Freedom To Choose (Scotland)
• PASAN
• The Smoker's Club
• Les Dissidents de Génève
• Netzwerk Rauchen

Press releases and contacts

To announce the launch of the TCTactics site, we offer two press releases for the media to use in its preparation of stories:

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War of the Wikis

A grassroots response to an attack against smokers

The latest offensive by the Tobacco Control Industry against people who dare dissent from their ideology is a Wiki-style website published and run by paid professionals. In it, they attempt to portray ordinary but active people who enjoy tobacco and promote Free Choice as arms of the tobacco companies and as if they were generally getting paid to support the Tobacco Industry. In response to this offensive, a similar but opposing Wiki website is being launched on June 28th.

An ongoing project, the website, Tobacco Control Tactics, (TCT or tctactics.org) is a compilation of years of research conducted by unfunded grassroots members of organizations around the world who are alarmed by the under-reported and unaccounted for harm the international Tobacco Control Industry is causing to ordinary citizens and economies.

"It is high time the public is made aware of what is going on in the Tobacco Control Industry and we believe TC Tactics will be a very positive step in that direction," says Wiel Maessen of the Netherlands, a founding member of TICAP (The International Coalition Against Prohibition) who was one of the prime initiators and motivational forces behind the creation of the TCT Wiki.

The website explains how Tobacco Control has morphed from a reasonable movement to educate consumers about the health effects of using tobacco while working to reduce youth tobacco use. It is now a well-funded and highly organized industry encouraging discrimination against adult consumers of tobacco. TCT explores how scientists, afraid to jeopardize their careers, publicly dissent from the central doctrines of the Tobacco Control Industry only after they retire, and how the Pharmaceutical Industry both influences the research done on tobacco issues and funds front groups to promote conditions favorable to sales of ineffective nicotine replacement therapy products. In brief, it examines, as its name states, the tactics used by the powerful, international and highly integrated Tobacco Control Industry, an industry which is far less recognized but arguably as powerful as the Tobacco Industry itself.

When asked to describe what the TCT project was all about, Michael J. McFadden of the US-based Citizens Freedom Alliance said, "Considering the unremittingly positive media imaging of antismoking organizations we expect people to be shocked by what they read in these Wiki pages. We ask readers to simply read our pages carefully and compare them with information presented on the other side of the issue. We believe people will be angry at the way trusted officials and institutions have used the same sort of manipulative and cold-blooded tactics long associated with the Tobacco Industry in order to push a hidden agenda of denormalization and eradication rather than an open program of simple education and proper control."

The creators of Tobacco Control Tactics believe that today’s Tobacco Control Industry may very well be doing far more harm to people and society than is generally recognized. Whether that recognition can be raised to the level of public consciousness needed to bring about change remains to be seen. Bill Gibson, a Scottish Director of FORCES International asks, “Can a loosely knit and unfunded group of consumers sharing enjoyment of a legal product and those supporting them stand up successfully against a highly organized, tax- and pharmaceutical-wealthy international industry?” And then answers, “We believe that the TCT website is a good step in that direction: Truth, communication, and information can stand up and win against ‘Big Money’ when offered the sort of level playing field provided by the internet.”

ENDS

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No, The Debate is NOT Over.
No, The Science is NOT Settled.

Adult consumers are fighting back against the actions of and the unfounded allegations made by the Tobacco Control Industry which are ruining lives, damaging health and trashing the economy.

Unfunded and unsupported grassroots members of consumer organisations across the world have cooperated in creating the Tobacco Control Tactics Wiki which challenges the claims and tactics used by the recently unveiled University of Bath’s Tobacco Tactics website.

This informative and objective website for people wanting to know the truth about tobacco has been written and compiled by unpaid volunteers. It includes such things as:

• A list of scientists who have distanced themselves from the outrageous claims of SHS after their retirements and have become sceptical of the methods and practises of the Tobacco Control Industry in pushing an ideological rather than health agenda.

• How the Tobacco Control Industry often masquerades behind the mask of “charities” but is fed by corporate and competing pharmaceutical industries, acts as a front group to push through Government political policy, and could not survive alone due to minuscule public donations and support and their dependence upon highly-paid staff.

• Background as to why the ETS debate is NOT over.

• Examination of the failure of pharmaceutical nicotine cessation using NRT products which have shown success rates lower than 1% in some studies – in contravention to wild success rates claimed by the Industry.

• Demonstration of how the Tobacco Control Industry is out of control and causing more harm than good.

• Exposure of the 10 biggest lies pushed to achieve the aim of tobacco eradication rather than constructive harm reduction, thereby increasing, rather than decreasing, harm and deaths.

• Analysis of how the deliberate Denormalisation/Stigmatisation programme of the Tobacco Control Industry is causing significant harm to many smokers, up to and including encouraging attacks from extremists on smokers who refuse to follow the agenda by quitting their enjoyment of a legitimate product.

In the UK, England, Wales and Northern Ireland are now five years on from the smoking ban, and Scotland has endured it for six years. It was initially imposed supposedly to protect the health of bar workers – even those who smoked. Since then we have moved too far into the territory of interference in informed personal adult choice, individual consumer rights, and family life.

The Tobacco Control Tactics Wiki, formally launched on June 28th, is the product of a combined effort by tobacco consumers and their supporters from many different countries. It exposes the tactics used by the Tobacco Control Industry to further exclude adult tobacco consumers from their communities by encouraging unfounded discrimination intended to hound them out of homes, jobs and decisions that affect their own families. Even something as seemingly superficial as the current push for “plain packaging” is largely driven, in reality, more by a desire to further stigmatize adult tobacco consumers than by the claimed desire to “protect children from smoking” – a claimed result that has no real scientific or rational support behind it.

ENDS

Press Release Contacts for the Media

• Wiel Maessen - +31 6 15941282
• Michael J. McFadden - +1 215-386-8430
• Bill Gibson - +44 1576 203639
• Pat Nurse - +44 1522 723750 or +44 7794 392525